Performance evaluation of industrial Ethernet protocols for networked control application

• Main Authors: Wu, Xuepei, Xie, Lihua
• Other Authors: School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: 2021
• Subjects: Engineering::Electrical and electronic engineering; Industrial Ethernet; Performance Evaluation
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/150745
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Boosted by trends such as Industrial IoT and Industry 4.0, industrial Ethernet networks (EtherNet/IP, EtherCAT and PROFINET IRT as top-3 players) have been commonly deployed in industrial automation. The aim of this paper is to provide a practical guideline for selecting the right protocol in industrial networked control systems (NCSs) by comparing the performance of these protocols. Communication delays are discussed, formulated and evaluated with a study of a typical NCS. Simulation results demonstrate that with different frame packing, media access scheme, etc., EtherNet/IP, EtherCAT and PROFINET IRT offer different levels of real-time capabilities which lead to different control performance.